Awakenings
by Stephensmat
Summary: Ever take a long hard look at yourself? Sarah's about to, and it wont be fun. Tough issues being faced here. A SpiderShadow crossover.


**Awakenings**

A _Shadow_/_Spiderman_ Crossover by Stephensmat and Scarlet

"Accept everything about yourself  
I mean everything,  
You are you  
and that is the beginning and the end  
no apologies, no regrets.  
Clark Moustakas."

Scene Break 

Baileys was a small restaurant. A cozy neighborhood place. The kind of place where people unwind after the workday, or escape the office politics for a brief moment in time…like the old friends sharing an embrace in front of the bank of TVs, or the GenX bartender showing off his bottle tossing skills to other GenX cubicle dwellers, or the woman at a table doing a crossword puzzle and nursing a Cuba Libra.

A man with a briefcase came in and crossed right to the table at the far side of the room. His name was Stanhope Mitchell.

The woman with a crossword gave him a casual glance. "He's here," she said quietly.

"Any sign of the money?" replied a voice in her ear.

She pinched the bridge of her nose to dismiss a nagging headache, then casually pushed her hair behind her ear and adjusted her earpiece. "He has a briefcase. Can't tell what's in it."

Scene Break 

A dirty homeless man with unkempt coal black hair and squinting eyes that hid their blue-green color searched through a garbage can near the back door of the restaurant. "Excellent. Catch that, Spidey?"

Scene Break 

Spiderman was staked out on a rooftop across the street. "I didn't see her throw anything," he cracked wise into his radio.

Scene Break 

"Cute. Very cute. Sarah, ignore him,"

Sarah winced under the fresh pounding of her headache that wasn't making her surveillance any easier. "Play nice, boys," she whispered into her drink. "Now, you're not really going to come in here and bust up this nice place, are you?"

"No, but we don't know how he's getting out of the country," Stephen responded. "This is our last chance to find out where he's going before he's beyond our reach in Micronesia."

"Is that…a real place?" Sarah asked.

"It's actually 607 small islands in the South Pacific. Interestingly, while its total land mass is only 270 square miles, it occupies more than a million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. Population is 127,000, and the U.S. Embassy is located in the state of Pohnpei and not, as many people believe, on the island of Yap," Stephen replied with very little hesitation.

There was a long silence. Sarah said it first. "There's really something kind of weird about you, you know that?"

"You're just now figuring this out?" Stephen replied sardonically.

Spiderman's voice broke in again. "Here comes Max."

The door opened several moments later, and in walked the biggest black Market accountant in New York. Max came in and immediately went straight to the back of the room.

"Here we go," Sarah said, popping a couple of Advils.

"Don't make a move until the deal is over and Mitchell's left," Stephen advised them.

"Yeah, well, that may be a while," Sarah noted quietly. "They just ordered sandwiches." She looked down at the crossword she was pretending to be doing. "Stephen? Six-letter word for 'preserved arachnid'?"

"Hey!" Spiderman objected to the phrase.

"Scarab," Stephen told her through the earpiece.

Sarah nodded and started writing it down, then downed another sip of her drink in an attempt to dull the pain from this migraine that was threatening to drive her insane. As her head pounded, her vision actually swam for a moment. "Ooh."

"Sarah? You O.K.?" Spiderman asked in concern.

"Headache," she replied quietly. "Feels like a cross between a migraine and the worst sinus infection ever."

"You want to head home?" Stephen asked.

"I'll be fine," Sarah replied just a little too fast, then swiftly changed the subject. "What's Micronesia like this time of year?"

"Pretty nice. It's 2500 miles from Hawaii," Stephen told her.

"Which is a place you've never taken me," Sarah answered.

Scene Break 

Out back, the seemingly homeless man looked up from the garbage bin, a slightly confused expression on his face. "When was I supposed to take you to Hawaii?"

"Any time you like. You're a billionaire, it's what rich people do for friends on a whim!" Sarah complained.

Spiderman laughed softly in Stephen's ear. "Should I tell her you were going to take me to Hawaii?"

"What?" Sarah asked.

"Go not this place," Stephen warned.

"Yeah, I guess you're right, as we didn't actually get away on that particular vacation, because Kingpin decided to start bombing places," Spiderman continued. "We went to Siberia and The Hague instead."

"I _so_ do not want to know…," Sarah began.

"No, you don't," Stephen assured. "O.K. How's Tuesday work for you?"

"For what?" Sarah asked.

"A trip to Hawaii. Isn't that what you've been strongarming me about for the past five minutes?"

Scene Break 

Sarah choked on her drink. "Seriously? Three days from now?"

"I'll need that much lead time to set things up so that nobody will miss me if I'm gone, but yeah. Three days. Interested?"

Sarah gave an enormous grin. "You bet."

Scene Break 

Up on a rooftop, Spiderman shook his head in disbelief. "This is why I love America. A man can be picking through garbage bins one minute, and be taking a girl to Hawaii the next."

Scene Break 

Just then, the men inside the pub exchanged briefcases, and Mitchell stood up.

"Meeting's over," Sarah reported.

"Stay on Mitchell," Stephen ordered. "Spidey, take the sky. Sarah and I will take street level."

"He's heading for the back door," Sarah answered. "Max is on his way out front."

"He just stepped outside," Spiderman reported.

"Excellent," Stephen responded. "Sarah, get ahead of Max if you can, get out front, turn left, then wait for Mitchell to come out of the alley and start following him."

"Will do." Sarah took one more swig of her Cuba Libra, then stood, left some money on the table, and headed for the front door.

Scene Break 

Mitchell came out of the back door. He tried to carefully avoid the homeless man with long filthy hair who was searching through rubbish.

The moment he passed, the man stood up and peeled away the dirty jacket, revealing ordinary, clean clothes underneath. He pulled the cap off, and the long filthy hair came with it, revealing Stephen Cranston's sleekly-trimmed coal black hair underneath. Stephen pulled a packet of dampened cloths out of his pocket to wipe away the faux grime as he walked quickly out of the alley and met up with Sarah.

The two of them headed off to follow Mitchell on foot.

A turn of the corner later, they'd lost Mitchell's trail. "Where'd he go?" Stephen pressed Sarah.

Sarah closed her eyes to let her clairvoyant senses take over… and felt her knees weaken and her head swimming again.

Stephen caught her before she lost her balance. "Whoayou O.K.?"

"I hate migraines," she responded. "The world is way too loud and too bright today."

Stephen thought this over…and then something hit him. He waved his hand in front of her still-closed eyes.

"Cut it out," she complained. "You're not helping."

Stephen drew back slightly. Sarah's unawakened clairvoyance had always manifested itself as feelings, not visual impressions, so being able to see his hand was a _very_ bad sign of a _very_ bad thing about to happen. _Oh, no…not now…_ He sent a light telepathic probe at Sarah.

She screamed as it hit her mind and bounced off her psyche, and the mental impact caused her to lose her balance.

Stephen once more caught her before she collapsed completely. _Oh, no…the timing could not be worse…_"Spidey?" Stephen barked into his radio. "Sarah's down. RepeatSarah is down."

"What?" Spiderman replied. "What happenedis she all right?"

"I don't know yet. Stay on MitchellI'll get back to you in a few minutes." He concentrated hard to send for Moe.

Sarah thought she was going to be sick to her stomach from the disorienting sounds and sights seemingly pummelling her head. "What's going on?" she murmured.

"Easy," he urged. "Keep your eyes closed. You'll be less likely to get nauseous."

"Easy for _you_ to say..."

At that moment, Moe's cab pulled up to the curb and popped open the rear passenger door.

Stephen helped Sarah into the back of the cab, then ran around to the front. "Get out!" he snapped at his driver.

"What?" Moe asked, looking as confused as he felt.

Stephen physically pulled him from the cab. "There's no time. Tell Victor that it happened a week early. He'll know what I mean."

Moe nodded, not understanding but compelled to obey.

Stephen jumped into the driver's seat and floored the accelerator.

The Shadow's people had reworked the Cord sedan cab from the ground up. Speedboats and drag racers would have envied the pure speed machine that the cab had for an engine. And Stephen was now using all of this speed, heading out of city limits at a lethal pace. As he drove, he began spinning a psychic web of silence around the cab, trying to keep the energies from thousands of minds at bay for any precious seconds he could.

Sarah, lying dazed in the back seat, was now completely disoriented and almost delirious. "Wha… happ… ooooh."

"Just try to hold on, Sarah," Stephen called over his shoulder. "Try to stay awake. Don't open your eyes if you don't have to, but don't fall asleep, either."

"Yeah, right," she muttered, nevertheless squinting at the back of the front seats instead of out the windows. "I haven't been car sick since I was a kid…"

"This isn't car sickness," Stephen replied.

Stephen's handheld radio gave a buzz. "What's going on?" Spiderman's voice called.

"Sarah's awakening," Stephen replied tersely.

The silence from the other end of the conversation scared Sarah more than any words could. "Oh, man…," Spidey finally said. "So what now?"

"Well right now, I'm doing what I can to block all the thoughts pouring into her head. It's not going to work for long, and if I keep it up for more than a few minutes or so it could mess with her awakening, and I am not going down the road again."

"Can you get her to the temple?"

"At this time of day, in a cab, starting in the middle of Manhattan? Not a chance in Hell. But I have to get her out of the city limits. Manhattan is not the place you want to be if you're a psychic with disintegrating mental barriers."

"Where are you going, then?"

"I have a safe house on Long Island. It's not the most secluded place in the world, but it's not Manhattan and it's reachable from here in less than a half-hour. I go there when I want a day off but don't want to leave the city. I think I can get her there."

"What can I do to help?"

"Mind the store for a few days. Stay on top of Mitchell, because we can't let him get out of the country. Call in anybody you need. Get Victor to help if you need it. But I'm pretty much going to be unreachable for at least the next 48 hours. I can't leave Sarah like this."

"Will do. I just can't believe you didn't see this coming."

Stephen threw his passenger a glance. "I did. I just thought it would have happened early next week."

Sarah heard this and was incensed. "AND YOU DIDNT TELL M…Ooooh…"

"Is _that_ why you suddenly wanted to go to Hawaii?" Spiderman challenged.

"And the point of this question is…?" Stephen answered.

"You could have told her what was about to happen," Spiderman's tone was accusatory.

"What _he_ said," Sarah murmured.

Stephen drove onto the ramp for the Long Island Expressway at breakneck speed and wove through traffic like a NASCAR driver. "I am _really_ not in the mood to discuss this right now…"

"Fine," Spiderman retorted. "I'll take care of everything."

"Good." Stephen drove a little farther and a little faster with each passing minute until the traffic had thinned out noticeably, then checked on his passenger in the mirror. "You still hanging in there?"

"Yeah," she said in a pained voice.

"Good." He turned off the freeway and headed into a wooded suburb, finally reaching a private drive. He fetched a key ring from his pocket and unlocked a metal lockbox attached to a stone post, then flipped a lever inside the box.

The gates across the driveway before them swung open. Stephen secured the lockbox once more and pulled inside the gates, then drove across a metal plate to signal the gates to close behind him.

At the end of the driveway, he steeled himself for what was about to happen next. "Brace yourself," he whispered to his passenger…and then let the shields he had built around her mind drop away.

Sarah let out an ear-splitting shriek.

Scene Break 

"A week early?" Victor said incredulously.

"That's what he said to tell you," Moe Shrevnitz explained as he stood in Victor's study, already more than a little bent out of shape at the notion that he had to take a cab to Cranston Manor because his own cab got taken by a Cranston.

"Good Lord," Victor sighed, pouring himself a fresh cup of tea. "Did he say where he was going?"

"What do you think?"

Victor nodded. "Typical. Still thinks he can handle everything himself."

"Victor, what's going on?" Moe finally asked.

"Sarah's awakening is what's going on."

That changed Moe's anger to concern immediately. "Yikes. Now _that's_ an emergency."

"Tell me about it." Victor looked across the room at a family portrait, seemingly losing himself in a memory. "Awakenings are so unpredictable. When Alexander awakened, we were at the beach on Memorial Day weekend. Talk about a crowdbeing around that many people is the last thing you want when your mind has no protective barriers."

"She going to be all right?"

"Hopefully."

The door to the study opened, and Peter stormed right through it, tailed by Andrew the majordomo, who was strenuously objecting to Peter's entrance.

"It's all right, Andrew," Victor reassured. "Close the door."

Andrew pursed his lips in disapproval but nonetheless closed the door to leave the three men alone.

Victor looked over at Peter. "I take it you're here to complain about Stephen's abrupt departure as well?"

"Would it do any good?" Peter replied sarcastically.

"No, but I suspect you won't let that stop you."

Peter frowned. "I don't like the fact that he kept it such a secret. It's her mind, Victor. She had a right to know that it was about to explode."

"But she wouldn't have understood it," Victor countered. "There's nothing in life that prepares a psychic to go through an awakeningit's not something that can be rushed or slowed or stopped. It just has to happen. We discussed this…"

"I take it 'we' means 'you and Stephen', since you two are obviously the experts," Peter retorted.

"…and we decided that it would be best not to tell Sarah it was coming, because there was nothing she could do with that knowledge except let it tear her nerves to shreds," Victor continued.

"I think that's a pretty arrogant assumption on your part," Peter snapped.

"I agree," Moe added. "I mean, if it was me, _I'd_ want to know."

"Really?" Victor looked Moe in the eye. "So you'd want to know that your brain, which already has an abnormal bioelectrical potential build-up in the left frontal lobe, is about to become so overloaded with those impulses that you're going to have what amounts to a massive epileptic seizure that could potentially kill you and will definitely leave you in a coma for several hours, if not days? And you'd really want to know that your chances of surviving this seizure and the coma that follows are 50-50 at best, even with the best of care? And you'd really want to know that nobody knows when this will happen to you for sure, but that it is definitely going to happen, and you could drop dead of it right on the spot even if every single precaution that could be taken is taken? And you'd really be prepared to retreat to the wilderness and wait it out like a convict on death row waits for an eleventh-hour gubernatorial pardon and _not_ let the waiting get to you?"

"_I_ would," Peter interrupted.

Victor looked annoyed with Peter's impertinence. "All right, let's change the scenario a bit. How would you deal with finding out that it was _Mary Jane_ whose brain was about to explode? How would you tell _her_ about this? 'Hi, MJ, just thought I'd let you know that your brain is going to explode in about a week. I don't know when it's going to happen, and I don't know if I'll be able to help you get through it, and you could die because of it, but don't worry about it, because it's going to happen and I just thought you'd like to know. So, want to catch a movie tonight?'" He scoffed at Peter. "You didn't even want to tell her you were Spiderman because you were afraid just that knowledge alone would hurt her. I'm really sure you'd be right there in the front car of the honesty train about something like _this_."

Peter seethed but didn't have an answer for Victor. Which made him seethe all the more.

Victor took a moment to mentally revel in his victory, small though it was. "Now, then," he said, clearing his desk. "Let's get down to business. I understand you've been working on a money laundering case with a man named Stanhope Mitchell…"

Scene Break 

_"Uncle Victor…my head hurts…"_

_"I know, Stephen." Victor put his fingers on either side of his 13-year-old nephew's temples and applied gentle pressure as they sat in the back of a military transport that was ferrying them up the side of Slide Mountain, on the way to the Temple of the Cobras. "Relax. We'll be there soon."_

_"I'm trying…it hurts…"_

_"**Relax…**"_

_Stephen could feel something inside his head, gently massaging his brain from the inside. "That is so weird."_

_Victor laughed slightly. "**I know. You'll be able to do this for yourself soon enough.**"_

_The very thought actually made Stephen cringe. "Just what I always wanteda brain scratcher." Then he winced again. "Ooh…"_

_"**Hold on, Stephen. Hold on just a little longer.**" Victor looked ahead. "**We're here.**"_

_Stephen tried to open his eyes, but his vision was blurred. But even he knew the road ahead didn't look any different than the rest of this mountain pass…_

_…and then a young Asian monk reached into the transport and took his hands. "**Hello, Stephen,**" the monk said in a calm and serene tone. "**I am The Marpa Tulku. Welcome to the Temple of the Cobras.**"_

_Stephen would have responded to the introduction, but he was too busy collapsing into a pained heap._

Scene Break 

Stephen frowned at himself and banished the unwanted memory. "Stay out of my head," he whispered to Sarah. "You've got enough to worry about with your own."

He carried her straight into the bedroom and set her down on the bed. He tried to make her as comfortable as possible, but it was hard with her thrashing away at things only she could see. Stephen clearly needed help, and there was really only one place to get it. He hurried into to the next room and sat at a desk with a ham radio on it.

He had just started turning the dials on it when another set of moans from Sarah, louder than any of the previous cries, made his fingers freeze over the dial. He scooped up the radio and carried it back to her room.

Sarah was a mess, looking like she was trapped between a heroin withdrawal and a nightmare. It made him feel utterly helpless, a feeling he was not used to…and did not _want_ to get used to. He set the radio down and headed into the small kitchen to fetch a large bowl of cold water and a stack of washcloths.

Another chorus of moans made him hurry back to the bedroom, where he found Sarah shaking and shivering like she had a high fever. Her face was flushed, her skin was burning up, and her eyes were dancing frantically back and forth, staring at nothing. This was completely unlike a telepathic awakening; Stephen had seen his share of those at the Temple of the Cobras and remembered his own experience distinctly, and he knew well that telepathic awakenings almost always involved sound…lots and lots and _lots_ of sound. An awakening that produced visual deliriums was not something he had ever encountered, but he could see from the brief glimpse he'd allowed himself inside Sarah's brain that her psychic reservoir was surrounded with mirror-like walls, lenses through which clairvoyant visions were caught and collected. This was something he was completely unprepared to handle. And that scared him like precious little else ever could.

He set a washcloth against her forehead. "Easy. Relax."

The cool cloth seemed to settle her down for a moment. He breathed a sigh of relief, then reached over and picked up the ham radio's microphone. After spinning the dials for a moment, he clicked the push-to-talk button. "Long Island Safe House calling Slide Mountain. Come in, Slide Mountain. Over."

Nothing. Stephen checked the frequency, then pushed the button on the microphone again. "This is Long Island Safe House calling Slide Mountain. This is an emergency. Over."

There was no answer. Sarah was moaning again. Stephen could feel her mind spinning out of control, pulling at his psyche. Reflexively he pushed back.

Sarah shrieked again.

Stephen immediately stopped, and gritted through the pain of her minds pulling at him. This was agony. What was he supposed to do? "Long Island Safe House calling Slide Mountain. Come in, Slide Mountain. Is anybody there?"

Still no answer.

Stephen's frustration boiled over. "HEY! IS ANYBODY AWAKE UP THERE?"

A reply crackled back. "This is Slide Mountain…go ahead."

"Who is this?"

"This is Sato. Who is this?"

"Sato, this is Stephen Cranston. Find the TulkuI have to speak to him."

"I'm afraid the Tulku is in meditation right now. He is quite busy."

Stephen seethed. "And I'm The Shadow with a clairvoyant agent awakening less than ten miles from a major metropolitan city. We're _all_ having a busy day. Get him on the radio _right now_ or I will see to it that you never see the light of day again!"

As expected, the radio went silent for several seconds, until the Tulku's voice came back. "Stephen?"

"Tulku, I have a clairvoyant in the early minutes of an awakening, I can't get her to you, and I can't transport her safely. What do I do?"

"A clairvoyant?"

"Yes."

There was a long pause. "Not exactly your area of expertise."

Stephen gritted his teeth. "I am _well_ aware of that. Now, what do I do?"

"Does this clairvoyant have a name?"

"Sarah Branson."

Another pause. "Do you know her well?"

"Yes."

"Is she aware of your secret?"

"Yes."

"That is good. Because if she were aware not before, she definitely will be by the end of her awakening. Stephen, I cannot come there to assist you. I have a student here on the verge of awakening within the next 12 hours, and I cannot leave him. You will have to handle this by yourself."

That was exactly the answer he did _not_ want to hear, but somehow it was the answer he was expecting. "Tell me how."

"There is very little you can do to protect heryou can only support her. Make her as comfortable as possible. I need to step away from the radio for a momentmy soon-to-awaken student is calling. Work on making her as comfortable as possible, and I will be right back."

Stephen sighed and set down the microphone. He could already tell this was going to be a long ordeal.

Scene Break 

MJ breezed into Cranston Manor and strode into Victor's study. "You rang?"

Victor looked up at her. "Ah, good, you're here. We're tracking a drug runner named Stanhope Mitchell who's retiring soon. He's made his fortune and he's going to leave the country. We have to link him to the drug money before he leavesand to do that we have to find him and the cash."

MJ nodded, processing this as quickly as she could. "O.K."

"Sarah is incapacitated, and Stephen's taking care of her, so you will have to work with Peter on this one."

"Is she all right?" MJ asked in concern.

"No. She's awakening."

"Meaning?"

"Her mind is exploding. Her psyche has suddenly expanded beyond its unawakened barriers, and until her mind builds new protective walls, she's going to be _very_ sick."

"How sick?"

The look on Victor's face was enough to give MJ the chills. "So sick that there is the distinct possibility that she may not survive."

Spiderman swung a window open and landed lightly in the room. "He didn't go back to the hotel. The timing really blowsSarah could track him easily after our stakeout this afternoon."

MJ turned to face him, frustration in her expression. "_This_ is what you were doing today? _This_ is why you cancelled our lunch date?"

Spiderman's body posture turned sheepish. "It came up at the last minute."

"So why didn't you bring me along? I could have helped!"

"I thought it could be dangerous."

MJ looked outraged. "So? I _am_ an agent, remember? I've been on plenty of missions with a fairly high danger factor, if you remember, not that _I'll_ ever forget…"

Victor was very relieved at Andrew's sudden tension-breaking entry in the room. "Excuse me, Mr. Cranston, there is a call from Slide Mountain for you on the main line."

Victor nodded a dismissal to Andrew. "Thank you," he said, then pushed the speaker button on his desk phone. "Victor Cranston."

The Tulku's voice crackled over the speakerphone almost immediately after. "The sun is shining."

"But the ice is slippery. Good afternoon, Tulku."

"Unfortunately, it is not such a good afternoon for some."

"Ah. I take it you've heard from Stephen?"

"Yes. Who is Sarah Branson and why am I only just now hearing about her?"

Victor frowned. "I thought Stephen told you about her."

"He had never even mentioned her until moments ago, when he asked for my help in guiding her through an awakening. Why was I not told about this?"

"I have no idea. I honestly thought Stephen had already told you."

"Victor, am I correct in my remembrance that neither of you have any experience dealing with a clairvoyant awakening?"

"You are indeed." Victor was now beginning to really worry about Sarah's well-being.

The Tulku's frown could almost be heard over the phone. "This is not the time one wants to be having a 'learning experience' for the first time about something so life-altering. Sarah is at stage one, and that is as far as I got in the conversation before I contacted you. I will try to give Stephen some guidance on how to deal with her emerging abilities as she progresses."

"So I take it you're not going to be able to reach him?" Now Victor really _was_ worried.

"No. I have another student near awakening here. Stephen will be on his own. I will keep you apprised as I learn more."

"Thank you." Victor disconnected the phone.

"That did _not_ sound good," Spiderman commented.

"It's not," Victor agreed.

MJ looked worriedly at Victor. "She's in trouble, isn't she?"

Victor looked grim. "Yes. And so is he."

Scene Break 

"Slide Mountain calling Long Island Safe House."

Stephen nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the radio, then hurriedly grabbed the microphone. "Go ahead, Tulku."

"Is Sarah still progressing?"

"If by progressing you mean 'thrashing around in a convulsive fit', then yes, she's progressing."

"Good. Awakenings are as hard on the body as they are on the mind. Make sure she is covered and kept warm to prevent her going into shock."

"Hang on." Stephen searched for any other linen in the house and found only a thin blanket. He grabbed it and fetched a spare cloak out of a hidden closet, then returned to the bedroom and covered Sarah with them.

Sarah thrashed again, throwing her covers off as she fought unseen visions of terror.

Stephen tried to cover her up again, but she once more thrashed about and tossed them off.

Finally, Stephen covered her and then held her down. "**_Sarah, calm down._**"

She moaned and cried, but settled down finally.

Stephen finally released her and picked up the microphone. "She is _really_ fighting me. Her mind is getting strongershe keeps trying to rip through my psyche, and I'm having a hard time keeping her from doing so."

"That is exactly the wrong thing to do, Stephen. Sarah's energies are receptive, which means her expanding psyche needs to draw in energy to cleanse and rebuild itself. You will have to allow her to pull from the strongest source in the areayou."

"If I let her pull all this out as hard as she's pulling now, it'll drive her over the brink."

"Indeed. This is where all those lessons on controlled release will come in handy. You will need to keep a slow, steady projection going so that her psyche can feed on yours without engorging itself. An overload at this stage would be catastrophic."

Stephen took a breath. "That'll be quite a juggling act."

Scene Break 

"What do you mean, _he's_ in trouble?" MJ asked.

"Stephen's always been a control freak," Victor explained. "He has to be in control of everyone and everything, and the reason we all let him take that control is because he's usually right. I taught him how to manipulate the room like my father taught me to do, and he does it so well that now he's the puppetmaster pulling the strings of everyone around him. But he's never learned how to simply _be_ around people instead of controlling their every move. He's never had to. He made every babysitter he had give him ice cream and let him stay up late, and if they somehow managed to resist him, he made them so completely miserable that they would run screaming. He can make hardened crooks fall down and cry. He can make total strangers follow his instructions thinking it was their idea. And he can play all of us and make us go through more gyrations than a fighter jet because we're his agents. Half the city obeys and the other half fears."

Peter pulled off Spiderman's mask and took a seat on the wall. "I think you're overstating things just a bit."

"Peter, when you first met him he led you in circles around the city and gave away nothing till he had a girasol ring on your finger."

"True…"

"And when he met MJ, he made no lies about the fact that he'd been running her life since Goblin's first attack till she blew up at him, to which he responded with scorn and quick remarks that totally forestalled any kind of argument."

"Well, granted…," MJ admitted. "But that just sounds like a spoiled child, not some kind of puppetmaster."

Victor smiled wryly. "That's what Stephen's teachers used to say, too, when he'd finally get caught doing one too many manipulations in a classroom. See if you can guess what lesson he learned from those experiences."

Peter matched Victor's expression. "More subtlety."

"Exactly."

Scene Break 

Stephen tried to focus his psyche, finally allowing a trickle of energy to flow through an opening in his protective barriers. He could feel Sarah's ravenous mind grab hold of it and begin pulling it into itself. But the ripping through his brain had finally stopped. "O.K., stream flowing," he said into the microphone. "Now what?"

"Now, you wait. The two of you must stay isolated until she has finished stage two. You must not miss the transition to stage threeyou will be the only one able to bring her out afterward."

"I'm about as far away from anyone else as I can get her." He frowned as he felt her pulling harder against his psyche once more, and frowned harder that he could feel her drawing against other parts of his mind that he was trying to keep walled off from her. "She's still trying to get into my head. How do I keep her out?"

"You cannot. Being an awakening guide is a double-edged sword. Your presence keeps her awakening mind from either starving from lack of energy or being crushed under the blow of too many thoughts, but it also exposes everything in your own mind. She will be able to see inside your mind just as you will be able to see inside hers."

Stephen nearly dropped the microphone in horror.

Scene Break 

"So what happens when he finds someone he can't manipulate?" MJ asked.

"Whenever he finds someone that won't play it his way, he goes to work on them with everything from subtle guidance to Shadow orders to force from agents to keep them in line," Victor explained. "And it works. He's been able to work this way virtually unopposed for most of his adult life." He allowed himself a smile. "Then came Sarah."

Peter nodded. "Yep. It was an interesting first impression to say the least."

"When Stephen met Sarah, she immediately took all the control in the situation. And admittedly, he let her do so, because he didn't think it would be a problem. Within minutes of their meeting, she had him running around in circles, she had him actively _running away_ from her, and she forced his hand into revealing his secret. But by his own choice he's let her in on every major mission he's had for the last six months."

Peter and MJ smiled at each other knowingly.

"For the first time, Stephen's treating one of his agents as a true equalor as close to a true equal as he knows how to doand he isn't relying on his usual tactics to control her. He's been compromising with her every step of the wayhow much she can know about him, what she can be involved in, and even how much she can write about his activities and publish to the general public. She doesn't agree with a lot of what he does, and he actually lets her disagree with him." He shook his head. "This goes so much deeper, though. I don't know what will happen. This is a critical thing for Stephen, and what's critical for The Shadow is critical for so many people." He looked away. "She'll be all right. She has to be."

Scene Break 

"There's no way I can keep her out of my mind?" Stephen asked, almost begging.

"No," The Tulku responded. "You have to make a choice, Stephen. Do you trust her enough?"

Stephen shook with near terror. "Trust isn't the issue. I don't let anybody in my head, Tulku. _Anybody_."

"Then you will have to get out of there, leave her behind, get out of her range, and leave it in the hands of fate."

He looked at Sarah once more, desperately hoping to see that he could leave her.

Sarah was still shaking, moaning incoherently, looking shockingly vulnerable.

Stephen sighed. "I can't do that."

"Then you trust her?"

"Yes."

_Sarah…are you feeling alright?_

Stephen looked sharply at her. That wasn't Sarah's voice…it wasn't coming from him, or the Tulku…"Oh, God."

"What is it?" The Tulku asked.

Sarah's eyes danced back and forth, finally locking with Stephen's, and he felt himself get pulled into her mind.

Scene Break 

MJ took a seat on the sofa and turned to face Victor. "So what does all this mean? What's going to happen?"

Victor leaned back in his chair. "The typical psychic awakening can be more or less divided into three stages. Stage one is the full extent of the psychic energies unfolding. This stage can take hours in an adept with only moderate abilities. It took well over a day with Stephen. My father's awakening is somewhat legendaryhis full awakening took over five days, and the first stage alone took nearly two. Thus, it's somewhat unpredictable if you don't have a good sense of how much potential energy is built up in the left frontal lobe before the awakening starts. The main danger from this stage is that awakenings are somewhat like an extremely strong epileptic seizure. Telepathic awakenings are full of soundlots and lots and _lots_ of sound. It's like standing in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve and everybody's wearing a microphone. The mind gets flooded with external thoughts. I've never witnessed a clairvoyant awakening, but my guess is that it's very visually orientednever-ending visual disturbances on top of any sound floods that might be occurring. All those assaults to the psyche cause an increase in blood pressure, an increase in pain, and an increase in overall mental disturbances. Adepts have been known to die of strokes, aneurysms, and a host of other catastrophic brain maladies. Of those who don't succumb to the physical pressures, a not-insubstantial number of unprotected adepts go insane from all the new thought inputs."

"Unprotected?" Peter asked.

Victor nodded. "It's extremely dangerous to go through an awakening alone, or even with an inexperienced adept. My father guided my mother and both of his children through their awakenings, and I can tell you that I for one would not have survived without him being there." He shuddered for a moment. "I was very glad that Marpa Tulku himself was available to help Stephen through his. One of the things that Marpa Tulku does for his students is provide them with a protective shieldhis own vast store of psychic power. Their expanding psyches can draw on it to sustain their growth during stage one…and as a shelter while they experience the remaining stages."

"Which are?" MJ prompted.

"Stage two of a full awakening often runs alongside stage onethe Tibetans call it the cleansing, stripping away of the old self. In practical terms, it involves bringing old memories to the surface so that they can be faced and dealt with. This stage is also fraught with dangers. The Tulku often spoke of students going mad as their memories and emotions raged through their minds unrestrained."

"Can she handle that?" MJ said. "Lord knows there are parts of my life I don't want to experience again."

"Me, either," Peter admitted.

"Which, again, is why it's dangerous to go through it alone. Stephen will have to work as part guide, part protector, part shrink. Someone who can hold her together and help her handle the deep emotional issues."

There was silence for several seconds. A look went from Victor to Peter to MJ back to Victor.

"Stephen's going to have to help her with crippling emotional problems?" MJ finally said.

"Yes," Victor confirmed.

MJ and Peter traded a look that said they were each thinking the same thing. MJ finally said it aloud: "So screwed."

Victor nodded in agreement. "Which brings us to stage threethe silence. The adept's psyche is completely drained, their emotions are laid bare, their most disturbing memories are ripped open and left bloody and raw, their bodies and minds are defenseless, and then…it all goes dark. And quiet. And they're left alone inside their own minds…and now have to find their way back to consciousness. Sounds easy…unless you're so completely exhausted from hours and hours of being mentally and physically tortured that all you want to do is stay in the quiet darkness. And that's why a disturbingly high percentage of adepts who survive the first two stages die in the third. They're trapped inside themselves…and they never wake up."

The silence that filled the room was more chilling than a January Arctic storm.

The phone rang.

Victor took one look at the number and picked it up immediately. "Yes, Tulku?" He listened for a long moment, then frowned even more severely than before. "Thank you." He hung up. "She's reached stage two."

There was silence for several seconds. A look went from Victor to Peter to MJ back to Victor.

"Find Stanhope Mitchell," Victor finally directed. "There's nothing we can do for Sarah."

Scene Break 

_"Sarah? Are you all right?"_

_"Just a headache, mom," the little girl answered. "Can I have the chips? We're going to be playing soon."_

_Her mother handed them over and smiled at her. "Come on, you're the star."_

_Sarah smiled back and went into the backyard. There were kids, cake, streamers, presents, and a banner saying "Happy Birthday Sarah"._

_And unseen by all of them, a fully-grown Sarah stood off to the side, watching like a spectator. Everything looked weird, distorted, like she was looking at it through a fisheye lens._

_"You remember this?" asked a familiar voice._

_She turned…and found Stephen, looking very normal in comparison to everything else around her, standing at her side. "Yes, I do. But I really don't want to…"_

_"Where's Cassy?" the birthday girl demanded._

_"I don't know," answered the little boy with the rumpled hair and the sassy attitude._

_The birthday girl studied him long and hard. "Yes you do. You stole her!"_

_"Did not!"_

_"She's in your bag!"_

_The boy looked like a deer in headlights briefly, but shook his head. _

_Sarah watched with a sort of detached depression. "He's lying."_

_"Yes."_

_"I knew he was. I just knew."_

_"Give her back!" shouted the little girl._

_"I don't have her! You're being stupid!" The boy just turned away from her._

_"Kids can be so cruel," Stephen observed._

_The girl turned away from him and stormed away, over to his bag, yanked it open, and pulled out the missing doll. She glared again over at the boy, who was talking with another group of kids. Whatever they were talking about, they stopped as soon as she arrived there._

_"What's going on?" the girl asked._

_"We're going to play Hide And Seek," said one of the other children._

_The birthday girl grinned hugely._

_"I was always so good at this game," Sarah agreed._

_"You were a natural," Stephen told her._

_Sarah stopped smiling at the memory. "Oh man, I remember this part."_

_"You hide, I'll seek," the boy told Sarah._

_The little eight-year-old smiled happily and ran off to hide._

_The grown Sarah wasn't smiling. "Yeah, you know what? I don't want to do this any more. Can we go to another memory?"_

_Stephen shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. But don't worry; if you don't like this one, we'll move on to another one shortly. We're going to see all of them eventually."_

_Sarah stared at him. "All of them?" her voice was shaking._

_Stephen was worried too. "Yeah."_

_Sarah shook her head violently. "I don't want you to see." _

_"I know. I'm sorry."_

_Sarah turned back to the party, only to find that it was several hours later. Little Sarah was hiding in a closet, asleep._

_"Sarah!" called her mother's voice, accompanied by the sounds of doors opening and closing somewhat frantically. The little girl awoke as her mother pulled the door open._

_"Sh-h!" the girl whispered. "We're playing hide and seek. They haven't found me yet."_

_Her mother stared at the girl. "Sarah…the party's over. Everyone went home."_

_The older Sarah felt a knowing ache in her heart. "They ate all my cake, too," she whispered. "They never even played. They just wanted me out of the way."_

_Stephen didn't know how to help. "I know."_

_"Why did I have to go through this?"_

_"Because it's part of your awakening. Your mind is trying to cleanse itself of negative energies and influences. To do that, it sorts through all the memories in your head, so you get the fun of watching them all happening all over again while it does the sorting. It stinks. But it's over for now."_

_"I hate this!" Sarah declared, starting to cry softly. "It took me years to get over this kind of childhood crap, and now I've got to go through it all over again?"_

_"It's part of your awakening," Stephen repeated. "Your mind is taking a long look at itself. It's part of the growth process."_

_The little girl was sobbing as her mother gave her a hug._

_The grown Sarah was weeping too, feeling everything all over again as if it were the first time. "Go away! I don't want you to see this!" She reached out and shoved him away._

_The moment she touched him, the whole world around them changed._

_Stephen looked horrified. "Oh, no."_

_They were in a schoolyard. Sarah saw a kid with dark hair and darker eyes watching as a schoolyard bully pummelled a little kid with glasses. The bully had four kids behind him._

_Sarah was suddenly behind the fully-grown Stephen. "What…what is this?"_

_Next to her, Stephen had his eyes squeezed shut. "**Get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head,**" he whispered._

_"Ow!" she protested._

_Stephen growled in frustration. Of course he wasn't going to be able to push back. Which meant that he was going to have to wait out this memory, too. "I have already been through my awakening," he protested to no one in particular._

_"So this is your brain?" She looked impressed. "Wow. I'll be able to get inside your head?"_

_"Not if I have anything to say about it…"_

_Nine-year-old Stephen, meanwhile, had decided he'd had enough of the bullying and charged forward. "Leave him alone, you ape!"_

_The bully had turned around and glared at the young Cranston. "What'd you call me?"_

_The older Stephen shook his head firmly at his younger self. "Don't say it," he began._

_The younger Stephen looked at the bully snidely. "An ape. It has more than two letters, so I can see how you'd have trouble with it."_

_The bullies let the kid with glasses go and turned on this new prey._

_Stephen took a step forward and grabbed the bully._

_The bully reversed the hold and started waling away on the young dark-haired boy. His cronies joined in, and within thirty seconds had left little Stephen gasping for air and stripped of his jacket and lunch money. Authority restored, they left him alone._

_The kid with glasses came over and helped him up. "Why'd you do that?"_

_"I hate bullies," little Stephen told him. "Come on! Let's have lunch."_

_"How? He took your money."_

_"Yeah, but I have lots more now." Little Stephen opened his hand and revealed all the stolen cash he had lifted from the bully._

_Sarah laughed merrily. "Yep. Nice to know you haven't changed."_

_Stephen tried closing his eyes, but it wasn't helping. "I suppose merely asking you to 'get out' isn't going to work…"_

_The scene had shifted to the lunchroom. Stephen was paying for his lunch and his newfound friend's, when the big ape reappeared at his shoulder and clapped a hand over his neck. "HEY! You thief!"_

_What followed was a brutal cafeteria fight that had the younger Cranston at a distinct disadvantage. Several seconds later, Stephen was down, with his nose bleeding and his face bruised._

_"Had enough?" sneered the bully._

_Stephen responded by kicking his opponent in the crotch, getting up as he fell, and started kicking him over and over._

_Sarah was horrified. It was a nasty fight, made nastier still by the fact that it was between nine year olds. She looked shell-shocked at the older Stephen next to her._

_"**Get out!**" Stephen shouted as he finally wrenched his mind free._

Scene Break 

Stephen threw himself backward off the bed and pushed as far away from Sarah as he could get.

Sarah was now screaming in pain and thrashing pitifully.

Stephen was completely mentally exhausted and not sure how much more of this he could take. And if they were only just in Sarah's childhood, they had a _long_ way left to go…

"Stephen!" shouted the Tulku through the radio. "What's happening?"

Shock quickly gave way to rage and he snatched up the radio. "That's it, Tulku. No more. I'm not letting her in my head any more. Send someone here right now. No more."

"Stephen, you are her only hope," the Tulku told him soothingly. "I understand that you were not expecting to go through this with her…"

"Tulku, I have been through an awakening with you, and I do not recall getting to see all twenty-something childhoods worth of memories in _your_ brain!"

"Of course not. Telepaths do not process memories visually, though the sound memories are so distinct that they invoke mental pictures…"

"Look, I'm not interested in splitting hairs over this…"

"Yes, I know. To answer your question, you did not see my memories because that is one of my gifts. The Marpa Tulku's role is as a blank canvas, used in every conceivable way by every conceivable type of adept. Thus, I can be a vessel of pure psychic energy for a ravenous psyche, or a shield from the assaults of the minds of the world, or a guiding light at the end of the awakening cycle. But that is not one of _your_ gifts. I understand that you are frightened by the sheer intensity of what is happening, because your memories are not things you are necessarily proud of seeing. But you have to do this for her, or she will die."

"Tulku, if this keeps up, I…I mean, who knows what she'd see? I mean, I wouldn't be able to hide anythingshe could find out any random fact that flits through my head. She would know _everything_!"

The Tulku almost sounded amused. "I take it that you do not appreciate the irony of the situation?"

"That's not funny!"

"I know. But you are the only one who can do this. You _have_ to."

Stephen took a deep breath, then took a couple more. "O.K."

_Sarah! Sarah, wake up, baby!_

Stephen looked back at his writhing charge. "Here we go again," he muttered as he was pulled into her mind.

Scene Break 

_A spectral Sarah watched her mother panic over an epileptic younger self. It was a harrowing sight even now, and the look on her mother's face was more painful than she remembered it being as a child. Her mother looked absolutely terrified._

_Stephen was suddenly behind her again. "Where were you?" she asked him miserably. "I just experienced measles, being kept back a grade, losing my dad, a tetanus shot for a rusty nail in the foot, and a rather nasty episode of being left behind at the grocery store."_

_"I know," Stephen told her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to leave you here, I just…I panicked. I'm sorry." He paused. "What happened to your dad?"_

_She looked shaky. "He dropped dead on the bus on the way home from work. I remember the policeman telling Mom that he was dead when they got to him." She felt tears running down her cheeks. "I really didn't need to see that again."_

_"Let me guessyour memories of him include him having the occasional migraine, bouts of vertigo, delirium when he was sick?"_

_"Yeah." Now she looked confused. "How did you know?"_

_"Just a guess. That explains where you got your clairvoyance. You inherited it from him."_

_Confusion gave way to fear. "He died during this, right?"_

_Stephen hesitated, then nodded. "The survival rate for adepts who don't have guidance through an awakening is…not very high." He put on a brave face. "That's why it's good that I'm here. I'm not much of a guide, but at least you're not completely alone."_

_"For now," Sarah grumbled._

_Stephen nodded, nailed._

_Sarah turned back to the unfolding memories, now showing her younger self in a hospital bed. "The doctors told Mom that I was epileptic. Especially after what happened to Dad, she followed me around for weeks expecting me to go into seizures. I scared her so much."_

_"It wasn't a seizure," Stephen told her. "It was a partial awakening, Your mind grew a little bit faster than your protective walls did, and the energies spilled over. To an untrained observer, it looks just like an epileptic seizure." He sighed. "You're actually very lucky. Many doctors used to medicate seizures right away, and the medication damages the adept psyche so that it can't fully awaken. The build-up of energies with no outlet eventually ends up many killing unlucky adepts."_

_"She stayed right here with me," Sarah said. "I...I put her in so much danger."_

_"How?"_

_"Right here!" Sarah whispered and pointed as her younger self slipped out of bed, awake and alert, as her mother dozed fitfully. It was the middle of the night, and the strange dreamscape shifted to follow her._

_The girl walked down the halls, and eventually made her way into the ER, where two doctors were working frantically on a patient._

_One of the doctors was blinking rapidly. The little girl couldn't help but stare._

_"I didn't know what it was," Sarah told her companion. "But I just fixated on the way he kept blinking, the way his hands shook."_

_The little girl turned and wandered from the ER, unnoticed by everyone, and she eventually found her way into the offices. She stopped at a door labeled "Dr. Daniel Morgan, Chief of Staff". The little girl went inside and sat in his chair, clutching Cassy tightly. She looked at his desk, looked at the shelves, pulled open the drawer, and revealed an almost drained bottle of bourbon._

_There was a noise. The girl jumped and ducked under the desk._

_Two men burst into the room, witnessed by Stephen, Sarah, and the memory of the scared little girl she used to be._

_"Danny, what the Hell was that?"_

_"What?"_

_"That! Just then! The guy died!" _

_"You were there."_

_"Yeah. I was there, and I remember your hands were shaking too!"_

_"They were not!"_

_"They were and…wait, what is that?"_

_The older doctor looked at his open drawer in horror. "Someone's been in here!"_

_"This is scotch," the younger doctor said._

_"Bourbon," Morgan corrected angrily as he shut the drawer._

_"Well, that explains a lot…"_

_"What do you mean by that?"_

_"That's not the first time you've injected the wrong drug in an IV."_

_"A.J., I swear, I'm not drunk. I had a couple of nips at the start of my shift..."_

_"Oh, dear God."_

_"Look, keep your mouth shut about this. I'm only a month from retirement. And besides, it wouldn't have made a difference what we injected into that guy's veins; he was bleeding out."_

_"And that's supposed to excuse you shooting somebody with poison because…?"_

_"Because I was going to recommend you to replace me when I retire."_

_Long silence. "Fine."_

_The two men left._

_Little Sarah rolled out from under the desk a few minutes later and snuck back out the door._

_Sarah's older self was shaking, experiencing the whole event all over again. "I should have said something. My mind led me there without even thinking about it! I should have said something."_

_"So why didn't you?"_

_The scene had shifted again to the next morning. Sarah's mother was still asleep in the chair. The little girl was looking out the window, when Dr. Morgan came in, holding Cassy in his hand. "I think you dropped this." His eyes were pure steel. _

_Little Sarah fidgeted with her blankets._

_Morgan didn't stop looking down at her. "I found it in my office. Did you go wandering during the night?"_

_The little girl's eyes were as big as saucers but she nodded._

_The doctor glared at her. "That's a bad thing. That's a very bad thing. Because hospitals are dangerous places. You wouldn't want something to happen to you, or your dolly…or to your mommy…" With that, he broke the head off the doll._

_The little girl was shaking._

_So was Sarah. Her eyes were wide, her breathing was quick, and though she was going through it all a second time, it felt like the first. No, it felt worse than the first._

_Stephen was still right behind her, trying to decide how best to comfort her. He finally chanced a gentle backrub as reassurance. "It's O.K., Sarah, it's O.K. You survived it."_

_Sarah was sobbing. "Mom woke up, and saw I was better, and she held me tight, and she was crying, and she was telling me how glad she was I was O.K., and I didn't say anything."_

_"Of course you didn't. You were just a child, and you wanted to protect your family."_

_"When we left the hospital, there was a guy being wheeled in on a stretcher, and Morgan went to help him, and his hands were shaking again, and I didn't say anything..."_

_Stephen nodded. "I know. It's O.K. You were scared. You thought you were doing the right thing."_

_"Was I?" Sarah pleaded. She turned and hugged him tightly. "I mean..."_

_As before, the moment she initiated contact, the room blurred. The scene shifted._

_Stephen blinked, horrified as he recognized his surroundings. "No! Not this!"_

_Sarah looked around. "This...this is your mind again, isn't it? Why do I keep ending up in your mind?"_

_Stephen had squeezed his eyes shut again. "Back away right now…"_

_A younger Stephen Cranston, wearing a ski mask, was watching from a low rooftop, with two agents, Cliff Marsland and Jericho Duke, flanking him, also masked. They were watching two men in suits load a writhing body into the trunk of a car._

_The younger Stephen lifted the two-way radio from his pocket. "They're doing it. We can take them."_

_"Wait till I get there," his uncle's voice crackled into his earpiece. Only Stephen, and through the memory, Sarah could hear him._

_Another man came out of the dilapidated building to join them._

_"Niska's there too! We can take them all! We have to go now!"_

_"Wait till I get there."_

_The younger Stephen ripped the earpiece out of his ear. "Let's go."_

_Sarah looked in surprise at the older Cranston, watching everything with disbelief._

_The older Stephen watched with dawning horror. "Get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head!"_

_A quartet of agents rose from concealed hiding places and struck, as Duke, Marsland, and the young Cranston headed for the fire escape. As they climbed down, the volume of gunfire increased dramatically, and by the time the trio had made it to the street it was all over…with the Shadow's agents on the losing side. The four agents who had made the initial attack were all dead._

_"My fault," whispered Stephen. "All my fault."_

_"This is what you did as a child?" Sarah asked incredulously._

_He closed his eyes. "Get out of my head…get out of my head…"_

_"Stephen..."_

_"**GET OUT OF MY HEAD!**" he roared._

Scene Break 

The impact of cracking his skull against the wall stunned Stephen back to reality. He looked around.

He was on the floor, having tumbled off the bed once more as he forcibly parted his psyche from Sarah's. Sarah was still lying on the bed, thrashing around in agony.

Shaking from the after-effects of the memories, he wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth on the floor, trying to calm himself down enough to even consider going on.

Scene Break 

Moe was driving Peter and MJ in one of Victor's luxury cars, which looked as much in place in the city as the cabbut, much like everything Moe drove, was more than it appeared. The modified Town Car had the engine of a sports car and could go from 0 to 60 faster than some European speedsters. It also had a communications setup worthy of a presidential limousine and was capable of hiding weaponry, money, costumes, or people if necessary. It was an urban combat vehicle cloaked in the veneer of high society elegance, the trappings of money hiding a quiet strength.

The chilly silence in the back, however, made Moe wish the motor didn't run so quiet.

"So," MJ said finally. "Why wasn't I there this morning?"

"It was only a three-person job," Peter said, not for the first time, since they'd started out together. "Stephen in case of trouble, Sarah for tracking complications, and I was on lookout and backup."

"Yes, but see, this morning you told me you had a thing at the _Classic_ that you couldn't get out of, so you cancelled on breakfast with me," MJ said coldly.

"I thought it could have been dangerous…"

"So when you heard from Stephen about this mission, your first thought was how to protect me when there was no indication it was dangerous, when you knew full well the situation could be handled, and then came the lying to me about it part, which is sort of the big one..."

Peter was trying to sink through his seat. "Is there any way for me to get out of this with dignity?"

"Right about now, you're pretty much down to ritual suicide, sweetums."

Peter groaned. "Look, Mitchell made all that money illegally, and anybody, including two cops who got in his way, vanished, and we were intending to get in the way. I wanted you to be safe."

"But I still could have helped! Any other agent you wouldn't have had this problem with!"

"That's because the thought of any other agent in trouble doesn't make my stomach churn. That's because the very thought of any other agent being killed doesn't make me wish I were dead instead. That's because I love you too much to put you in any kind of danger!"

_Oh, brother,_ MJ thought. _Not this argument again. Should have never mentioned I was having trouble dealing with it. He's going to clam up and run away again if I don't get this straightened out…_ "Peter, news flash! You're Spiderman. I'm your girlfriend. Danger is a part of the relationship. As long as I'm with you, I have to accept that."

"Well, that doesn't have to be the case," Peter snapped.

Cold empty silence.

"What's that supposed to mean?" MJ finally burst.

Peter took a breath. "All I meant was that you don't have to put yourself in unnecessary danger."

"And if you were walking into a room full of armed men, that would be dangerous, but watching someone while having a drink in a bar in broad daylight in public is hardly the same thing."

"I agree, unless we were watching a known drug money launderer with mob and drug gang connections having a drink before he skips town with millions of ill-gotten funds that he's been known to kill to protect. That's a risk I'm not willing to take."

"I _am_."

Long chilly silence. Peter was getting tired of MJ going both ways on this argument lately, but it wasn't like he hadn't gone both ways on it himself…

"How'd you track him to the bar?" she said finally.

Peter forced himself to return to business. "We tapped the phone of a black market accountant named Max. They set up the meeting here."

"Do you still have the recordings?"

"Stephen does."

"Where is he storing them?"

"On the Sanctum's master computer…" It was then that Peter realized that being in something other than Moe's cab could indeed be quite beneficial. "…which, if I'm not mistaken, we should be able to reach through this." He flipped open a panel between them to reveal a small writing surface and laptop.

MJ looked impressed. "I have now seen _everything_."

Peter started to suggest that MJ hadn't really seen everything, she merely hadn't been on enough missions…then decided that such a statement might restart the argument. "All righty then," he said, firing up a connection to the Sanctum.

Scene Break 

"Hey, Max," Stanhope's voice said over the laptop speakers. "You got the accounts?"

"Yeah." Max answered. "I need you sign some papers to make it look legit, after that, you can funnel the money to your new accounts from any bank. But you still have to wait a day or two for the papers to go through all the checks, just in case. You got all the hard currency?"

"Can't carry it on me for two days, who knows what'll happen to it. I'm stashing it safely till I get out of here. Meet me at Baileys Restaurant in an hour, I'll sign your papers."

The next sound was of the line disconnecting. Peter turned back to MJ. "We don't know where he left the cash, and we lost him after this morning, he could be anywhere by now."

"If he's worried about the money being connected to him, then he probably doesn't have it with him." MJ said.

"Ordinarily no, but Stephen told me he's not booked in any hotels, or any of his old haunts, meaning he's staying on the move tonight, collecting the money from wherever he's stashed it tomorrow, and wiring it through Max's accounts before he gets on a flight tomorrow afternoon to Micronesia."

MJ blinked at him. "Micronesia?"

"607 small islands in the South Pacific. It has a total land mass is only 270 square miles and occupies more than a million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. Population is 127,000, and the U.S. Embassy is located in the state of Pohnpei and not, as many people believe, on the island of Yap,"

MJ smiled. "You're so smart."

Peter shrugged. "Well, you know."

MJ turned back to the laptop. "It was from a public phone."

"We thought so too, but we knew where he was meeting Max, so we didn't have to look into it when we could have just followed him back to his hideout."

"Do you know what pseudonyms he was using on the bank documents?"

"Nope."

MJ and Peter just sat for a while.

Peter smiled at her finally. "Not as easy as he makes it look is it?"

MJ shook her head ruefully. "Nope."

Peter thought for a moment and replayed the tape. Turning up the volume as they spoke, both of them leaned forward and listened closely.

"That tinny voice in the background." MJ said finally. "Is that a PA?"

"Seems that way."

Both listened intently.

"Next...Next stop! He's at a train station!" MJ said.

Peter wound the audio back. Both listened intently.

"Scarsdale. Hartsdale. White Plains..." Peter repeated slowly.

"That's the Harlem line!" MJ announced. "North Metro."

Peter grabbed his phone.

Scene Break 

The phone rang and Victor snatched it up. "Tulku?"

"No, it's me." Peter answered. "Any news?"

"Nothing new yet." Victor sighed. "What's new on your end?"

"The call Mitchell made this morning was from a train station on the Harlem line. Somewhere south of Scarsdale station."

"Wait a minute. Didn't you say this morning that you lost him at a train station?"

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

"Stamford."

"Stamford is on the New Haven line. He's not going back to wherever he came from."

"Stephen told me that his hideout was cleared out, and he's not reserved anywhere under his usual aliases, so he's not going back anywhere. if he's staying on the move then he just has to be sure to recollect the cash on his way out."

"I can get you the surveillance data on all the trains that went through grand central this morning, maybe you can find out when he switched lines to get to the restaurant."

"That'll take a while."

Scene Break 

It did in fact take both Peter and MJ close to eight hours to go through it all. MJ had spotted him for the first time at Stamford, getting on a train to Grand Central straight after his meeting with max. But after that, neither of them could find him on any of the staircase cameras for Grand Central, or any of the other stations between there and Stamford. Since Grand Central was the best place to change train lines, they turned to the surveillance for the arriving trains. Without knowing which station he had gotten off however, and only an approximate two hour window he could have done it in, that left nothing more than to painstakingly search through the records from that morning, both of them annoyed at the task, annoyed at each other, and worried about Sarah.

"Found him!" MJ and Peter yelled within a instant of each other.

"What?" Peter asked, coming over to look at her screen.

"There he is at Grand Central." MJ showed him. Peter checked the screen, it was him all right, still carrying that briefcase from almost ten hours earlier. "He got off the New haven line at Grand central, and wandered around the station for ten minutes. There aren't any cameras at the lounge, but I picked him up again on the platform, where he got on the 12:30 to Poughkeepsie."

"That would make it about two hours after he met with Max," Peter nodded. "Thing is, I just found him over here almost two hours after that."

MJ turned to look at Peter's screen. "Where?"

"Pearl River station. He got off the train from Grand Central, wandered around for ten minutes, got on another train back the way he came."

"Wait a minute." MJ picked up the railway map they had consulted that morning. "Poughkeepsie is the last stop from Grand Central heading north on the Hudson line. Pearl River is the third last stop on Pascack valley line. Where exactly is he going?"

There was a long beat.

Peter finally spoke. "How many stops are there between Grand Central and Pearl River?"

MJ checked her map. "Fourteen."

"And how many did the 1:15 stop at?"

MJ shrugged.

"Let's find out."

Scene Break 

Stephen looked over at Sarah, whose still-expanding mind was still gnawing away at his psyche. The day had long since turned to night, and they still had hours to go before they were through with this whole disaster. Which meant he needed to get back up there and help her again.

Except he really wasn't sure he wanted to.

_Coward,_ he told himself. _What are you really afraid of? That she'll find out how much you're really like your grandfather? How dark your mind really is? How distorted your sense of right and wrong can be? How narcissistic and controlling you really are? God, that look on her face...Cranston, you're a monster! Even to your friends, even to your partners, even to your family, the people that you love..._

And then he cut off his own argument. _Don't even think that word. You have no right to even consider thinking it. Not with the way you use and abuse every person you ever come in contact with. Back away from the emotions. Get it together. She needs help. She needs you._

Resolutely, Stephen went back to the bed. Sarah looked worse stillher face was twisted up, her eyes were squeezed shut, and she was still thrashing around pathetically.

Stephen tucked the cloak tighter around her and sat on the bed next to her, holding her still. Taking a deep breath, he slipped into her mind and into a newer, more recent batch of memories…memories including _him_.

Scene Break 

_Sarah was watching herself, absolutely sickened. All her memories were coming rapidly, in one long unbroken chain of cause and effect, things she had forgotten, things she wished she had forgotten, and things that she wished she could have changed, all coming over and over, on and on, and she had never felt worse about herself…nor more alone._

_"I'm back."_

_She turned and saw Stephen there. "Some guide you are," she accused._

_He let the accusation hit him square in the face and stood firm. "I'm not a spiritual guide, or any other kind of guide, for that matter, and I'm the first to admit that."_

_"Aargh!" She wanted to scream some more, yell, slap the living daylights out of him, but she knew that if she touched him, they'd switch to one of his memories and he'd leave again. So she shut her mouth and turned back to the current memories unfolding before her._

_She was almost to the present nowthe memories were clearer, the perspectives no longer as skewed. Her mirror image was standing before her old family home. A mirror of Stephen stood with her. Sarah was watching this with interest. She remembered all this. This was going to be all right. It was kind of an emotional moment, but not hurtful. She focused on the moment, nodding along with the words._

_"It was nice of you to come with me," she had said._

_"I was in the neighborhood," he'd answered in that annoying-but-cute faux modest tone. "You lived here?"_

_"Till I left home. It looked a lot nicer then."_

_"So why did you sell it?" he asked._

_"My mom moved out west about six months ago, and I can't afford the mortgage payments on an East Side rowhouse in this neighborhood." She had looked at her watch. "I'm supposed to meet the buyer here any minute now to formally turn over the keys."_

_"What a coincidence. I was supposed to meet the seller here to formally take possession of the keys to my newest investment property."_

_She had spun on him. "Are you kidding me?"_

_"Do I look like I'm kidding?"_

_"Hard to tell. Are you kidding me?"_

_"No. By the way, I was wondering…you wouldn't happen to know anyone who might be interested in moving into a place like this, would you?"_

_She had stared openly at him. "Really? I can't ask you to do this!"_

_"You didn't ask."_

_"No, that's not what I meant. I mean...to spend that on a whim..."_

_"You know, Sarah, in the time it's taken us to have this little conversation, I've actually made back the cost of the house in interest on my trust fund."_

_Sarah, watching with her companion from outside her head, smiled. "It was awfully nice of you."_

_Stephen gave a nod, but he wasn't smiling._

_Sarah thought that odd as she turned back to the memory._

_"So, when do you want to move in?" he was asking her._

_"Um…my lease isn't up for months," she answered._

_"I can take care of that, too, if you'd like."_

_Her mirror self gave him a swat, then a hug of gratitude..._

_…and that was when she saw him lift her key ring from her purse._

_Sarah watched it unfold with shock, as the memory of him hugged her back and smiled at her. "What's wrong?" he'd asked._

_"I've just never had anybody do anything like this for me." She smiled at him, trying to control her emotions. "Thank you."_

_"Lunch?"_

_"Of course."_

_She watched them walk away together and turned on her guide. "What was that all about?"_

_"Nothing important," he replied._

_"Oh, yeah?" She gave him a shove…_

_…and the perspective switched, and now the memory pair was outside a small deli. "Go on in and get us a table," memory Stephen told memory Sarah. "I need to stop in the hardware store for a minute."_

_"Home improvement?" memory Sarah teased._

_"Something like that."_

_Memory Sarah gave him a nod and departed._

_Memory Stephen stepped into the hardware store and exchanged the code phrase with an agent, then handed the key ring across the counter. "The boss needs a duplicate of these fast."_

_The agent nodded. "I'll get right on it."_

_Sarah whipped around to face Stephen. "Skip ahead and show me why you took those right now."_

_"Or you'll do what?" Stephen retorted._

_She grabbed hold of his arm. "Not let you back out on me, that's what."_

_The memory skipped ahead from the lunch they had togetherand she witnessed Stephen slipping the whole key ring back into her purse, just in time for her to reach in and attempt to dutifully turn over the keys to the house, which he at the time had gallantly "refused to accept"and she watched herself leave for work and Stephen get into Moe's taxi for a ride across town._

_And that was when she saw him letting himself in through the front security door of her apartment building. "You son of a…"_

_"Stop it!" He yanked his arm free and started to push outward with his mind._

_She grabbed him again. "No! You're not going anywhere until I see it all!"_

_The scene shifted to a few minutes later, showing Stephen letting himself into Sarah's apartment._

_"You knew I had a key," he reminded her, already uncomfortable with the memory even before the worst of it had unfolded._

_"I really thought you were kidding," she responded. "What did you think you were doing?"_

_And then she watched as he sat at the computer and looked through her notes, watched as he searched her bookshelves, watched as he read her diary, watched as he checked her phone messages._

_She whirled on her companion, outraged beyond words._

_"I had to be sure!" Stephen implored of her. "I needed to know you wouldn't turn on me! I needed to know about you!"_

_"You could have just asked me!" Sarah yelled._

_"You could have been lying!" Stephen whispered._

_"What, like you wouldn't have known? And besides, I'd never lie to you! Something you can't say any more! I have never felt so demeaned…so insulted in my entire life. This is so beneath you on so many levels! Why the Hell couldn't you just talk to me about whatever-it-was that you absolutely had to know about me? Why didn't you just say, 'Sarah, I can't let you write anything that connects me to The Shadow!'"_

_"Because you could have...you might have...I knew if I asked you straight up, then it would...I was afraid if..."_

_"What, Stephen? What were you afraid of? "_

_He'd finally had it. "You! All right? I was scared of you! Happy now? You knew everything about me! You knew some things that Peter didn't even know! You knew who I was, you knew I was psychic, and you could have told anyone, and you were a reporter and a clairvoyant and you could always know where I was! It scared the crap out of me! So, there! I was scared of you, of what you knew, of what you were, of what you could do! I am absolutely terrified of you!"_

_Sarah stared at him. "You...you were scared of me."_

_"Yes."_

_They both stood silently staring at one another. The memories around them both were blurred, as if they were standing in some kind of no-man's-land between their two psyches._

_"Why?" she finally asked._

_He turned away. "You really don't want to know."_

_"Oh, yes, I do." She grabbed his arm again…and as soon as she made contact, the scene shifted. _

_Stephen's memories had taken them to his condo. He was curled up on the couch with a blonde she didn't recognize._

_Sarah raised an eyebrow at him._

_Stephen's expression turned to true horror. "No! Get out of my head!"_

_The blonde was smiling at him. "This is nice. We don't get nearly enough time together any more."_

_Memory Stephen smiled at her, rubbing her shoulders gently. "That's your fault, you knowyou're always at work."_

_"I know. I'm sorry about that."_

_"I'm not mad." _

_"You sure?"_

_"Beyond a shadow of a doubt." He gave her that maddeningly mysterious smile. "Still, there's no reason I can't see you there. My hours are frequent but fluid. How about we meet at your office?"_

_She considered it. "I guess so. I'm on the sixth floor of Fisk Towers."_

_"Then it's a date." Stephen finished his glass of wine. "Want a refill?"_

_The blonde handed him her glass. "Sure."_

_Stephen got up and left the room. As he left, the dreamscape followed, as he went into the kitchen, took out a notepad, and wrote: 'Accounts division, money laundering, sixth floor.'_

_Sarah gave her companion a sharp look. "Do you make it a habit of plotting against everybody, or just us poor helpless females?"_

_"It's not what it looks like!"_

_"Could have fooled me."_

_"Get out of my head!" He gave her a hard shove, and the perspective changed again._

_Sarah spun and saw herself drowning under the onslaught of Hydroman. "MJ!" she was screaming as her lungs filled with water. "Help me! Help me somebody!"_

_Sarah spun around and glowered at Stephen. "Stop it!"_

_She grabbed at him and the scene changed again, back into his mind, as The Shadow stood in a hidden corner of a theatre, talking to a woman with a clipboard._

_"**No,**" The Shadow was saying. "**Don't let her get the part in the soap opera. Give her the commercial job. We don't know this girl yet, and if Goblin's going to strike at her again, I don't want her picture on the front cover of every soap opera rag. I don't want her memorable yet.**"_

_"She's good, though, boss. This'll be a tough sell. She nailed it, and she knows she nailed it. "_

_"**You will have to disabuse her of that notion, then.**"_

_"Right, boss."_

_The Shadow faded from view and watched as she went over to a very recognizable redhead._

_"MJ...," Sarah said softly. "What did you do?"_

_"Miss Watson," the woman, obviously a casting director, said to her. "You clearly misunderstand why you are here. This is an audition. Its purpose is to decide who has a serious chance at becoming a skilled actor, or actress, and who is filled with pipe dreams. You, for instance, are neither. For example, that outfit you are wearing, you clearly made yourself. The time spent ding so could have been spent in a far more useful waygetting acting lessons, for instance, or perhaps looking for a far more useful career at a nail salon. Either way, you are clearly in the wrong building."_

_Mary Jane just stared at her, then slowly nodded, leaving the room._

_"Good enough?" the director muttered under her breath._

_The disembodied shadow gave what looked like a nod of ascent._

_Sarah whirled on Stephen. "You self-righteous jackass."_

_"You don't have the whole picture," Stephen responded hotly. "I was trying to protect her from Goblin, who'd already tried to kill her once. I was trying to limit her exposure."_

_"You were deadening her career and making her miserable!"_

_Stephen couldn't deny that. "I thought I was doing the right thing."_

_"You certifiable control freak…"_

_Stephen had had enough. "You do not understand! The things I do, I do because I have to! Life is full of choices, and all of them have consequences. If I make the wrong choices, people die!"_

_"So you make other people's choices for them?"_

_"It beats the alternative!"_

_"Oh, yeah?" Sarah shoved him angrily again and once more the scene shifted._

_"Argh!" The Shadow was being sliced open by a Mongol warrior's bow and arrow._

_"Yeah!" Stephen shoved back._

_"Ulgh!" memory Sarah cried out as she cracked on the head on the handrail in an elevator._

_"Oh, no, you don't!" she snapped angrily and shoved him again._

_The noise level in both of their memories rose significantly as Stephen's memory of struggling to hold off his grandfather's psyche snapped into focus._

_"No!" Stephen gave Sarah a shove._

_Sarah watched the memory of an arrow point being pushed into her neck by a Mongol warrior._

_Sarah shoved him again._

_The mental images bounced back and forth frantically until both of them became overwhelmed with the kaleidoscope of colliding memories that was amplifying with astounding ferocity with each passing second._

_"Make it stop!" Sarah cried out._

_"I can't!" Stephen answered, realizing what was happening._

_"Make it go away!"_

_"I can't!"_

_"Why not!"_

_"Because you have to go through this. This is what awakenings do. They open your mind. And they rip your psyche bare in the process. And the broader your mind opens, the more intense the process becomes, until you're sure you're going insane by the end of it. I can't stop this. No one can. "_

_"Then why are you here!"_

_Stephen steeled his will. "To ride it out with you."_

_Sarah started crying. "I want to go home!"_

_The memories flew around them._

_Whatdidyoudo? You'retheShadow! AlwaysthisforwardwithyourinterviewsubjectsMissBranson? Sealedwithakiss? AreyouO.K.? Itwasniceofyoutocomewithme. You'refallinginlovewithher. Youneedtobefasterthanthat. I'vehadworse! IalwaysknewIhadtodosomethingaboutyoueventually. Andyoudidnttellme? Youcouldhavetoldher. Aweekearly. Whatisitwith yourgirlfriendandsupervillansanyway? Ican'tleaveherlikethis. Thenyoutrusther? Yes. _

_"**NO!**" Sarah screamed in a blood-curdling shriek as she pushed him away both physically and mentally._

Scene Break 

As Stephen reeled out of her head violently, he was pushed off the bed by the sudden burst of power that flooded the room, smacking his head hard against the floor.

Sarah gave one last seizure-like writhe, then went limp on the bed, her face flushed and her eyes finally closed.

And there they both lay, unmoving and eerily still, as the darkness of the night engulfed them.

Scene Break 

The phone rang, and Victor snatched it up. "Tulku?"

"Wrong again." Peter answered. "Still no word?"

"Nothing new since late afternoon."

"What was the word then?"

"That Stephen was seriously considering throwing in the towel."

"_What?_" Peter was shocked.

"I know."

"He can't be serious."

"Peter, Sarah's mind is at its most explosive right now. Explosive enough to let her see in Stephen's head too. He's had a phobia about that his whole lifehe doesn't let anyone in, mentally or otherwise."

"You're honestly telling me that he's willing to let Sarah die to protect his secrets? I can't believe that." A beat. "Well, actually, yes I can."

"At any rate, it appears to have only been a consideration. The Tulku said that Stephen seemed resigned to staying where he was, and that was the last anyone has heard from them. How's the hunt coming?"

"Victor, I honestly can't tell what he's doing. We're at Grand Central nowan agent let us into the security control room, and we've been studying tapes for hours. Mitchell went to forty-seven train stations today. Every line, going everywhere, and he never left any of the stationshe just got out, walked around for a while, then went back to the train platforms to get another train. The stops are random, but he keeps walking like he has a purpose."

"Well, if he wasn't stopping anywhere, then maybe he's just killing time," Victor suggested, "Or if not, then he's scoping out the transport system for his escape tomorrow."

"Today."

"Huh?"

"It's 2:15 in the morning. It's tomorrow already."

Victor checked the clock. "So it is."

"Victor, he wasn't scoping anything out."

"Why not?"

"There's no reason to. He never saw us trying to follow him this morning, he doesn't know we're on to him, and he doesn't need to know how every station everywhere works."

There was silence on the line. Finally Victor spoke. "Wait. Wasn't Mitchell stashing his money yesterday, so that he could pick it up tom- in the morning on his way out?"

Beat.

"Oh, I'm such an idiot!" Peter suddenly declared. "Thanks, Victor!"

Victor stared at the receiver, now echoing a dial tone since Peter's abrupt hang-up. "Happy to be of service," he deadpanned, then set it down and poured himself another cup of coffee.

Scene Break 

As the skies outside began to turn from black to sunrise-tinged grey, Stephen felt the hold that exhaustion had on him finally release itself. _Don't tell me I fell asleep,_ he mentally complained, then sat up and looked across at Sarah.

She was still lying motionless on the bed. Stephen reached for her psyche to check her progress…

…and encountered nothing but a vast emptiness.

_Oh, no…_ He pulled himself up off the floor and took a seat on the bed, quickly checking her pulse and holding his hand above her nose to feel for any air exchange.

Her pulse was there, but shallow and thready. She was barely breathing, and looked ghostly pale.

_No, no, no…_ He took a deep breath, then steeled himself and reached inside her mind. "**_Sarah…I know you can still hear me. I'm right here, and I'm not going to leave you. I know you're scared, and I know you must hate me right now. Nobody ever got that close before, and I'm...I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, and I'm still here, and I'm ready to lead you back, if you'll let me. It's almost over and you're doing great. You're so strong inside, more than even you know, and it'll all be over soon._**"

There was a faint fluttering inside her psyche. But it felt so far away.

Stephen took another deep breath and reached further inside. "**_Hold on, Sarah. I'm coming._**"

Scene Break 

As the sun rose, people very slowly started to fill the train stations, but as yet, it was mostly deserted. An exhausted Mary Jane followed Peter through Grand Central station.

"The reason Mitchell kept getting off at all the stations was he had business here," Peter was explaining. "Before the meeting, he said he had it stashed, but if he was hiding the money this morning, then why did he still have his briefcase?"

MJ snapped her fingers. "Because he hadn't hidden all of it yet."

"Right. And if he was still riding trains all yesterday afternoon, that meant he was either hiding it elsewhere, or gathering it up so he could get it fast on the way to the airport. And all the train lines he used came back to here." With a flourish, Peter waved to the multitudes of private lockers on the station's terminal.

"How do we know which one he used?" MJ asked.

"Victor had Burbank run a checkonly twelve lockers were keyed open yesterday, and of those twelve, only two were paid for 24 hours." Peter went to the first one and gave one swift tug on the door, easily snapping the lock.

Inside was a paper bag. Peter pulled it out and opened it. Sure enough, it was filled with 100 bills. "Jackpot."

"Now we just have to find Mitchell," MJ replied.

"He's on his way back here. He has to be." Peter led the way outside, fetching his cellphone and dialling. "The sun is shining." A pause as the pass code was returned. "Message from a mutual friend. You have four hours to get your people to Grand Central station and have them ready to arrest a man named Stanhope Mitchell, who has been drug trafficking for several years, and now plans to skip the country with his money. He will have it all with him when he comes to Grand Central Station today on his way to JFK." Peter listened for several more seconds, and thanked the man, hanging up. "The cops will be here to get him." He gave MJ a smile.

MJ smiled back, but it didn't touch her eyes.

"What?" Peter asked.

"You could have found all this out yesterday," MJ complained. "If you'd had me there to help you follow him on foot, we could have tracked his movement on the trains much easier."

"And if he'd noticed you following him on his bizarre route he'd have known you were onto him, and who knows what he might have done to you then?"

"Who's to say he would have spotted me? Who's to say he would have done anything?"

"You're kidding, right? Considering how paranoid these guys are, there is no limit to what lengths he'd be willing to go to if he even had an inkling he was being followed. Besides, it's not exactly like you blend in to the background these daysI've seen your face on a placard advertising this, that, or the other thing all over this station."

"So? It's not like Manhattan isn't crawling with models and actresses. What is up with you these days?"

"What is up with _you_? You can't seem to make up your mindyou don't want to be a target, but you want to be involved? Forgive me if I've got emotional whiplash lately!"

"Oh, yeah, like you have any room to talk…"

Scene Break 

As the drama built at Grand Central Station, the phone in Victor's study rang with an update of a much higher-stakes drama unfolding on Long Island.

Victor, who'd fallen asleep in an armchair, jolted awake and quickly reached for the phone. A glance at the Caller ID panel told him all he needed to know about who was calling him…and why. "Yes, Tulku?" A long silent beat. "Thank you." He hung up, then reached for his handheld radio.

Scene Break 

"What is this now where you think that I'm some porcelain doll that every crook in town wants to find?" MJ yelled.

"Because if anything happened to you, it-"

"It hasn't!" MJ snapped, exasperated. "For crying out loud, Peter, you can't live without risk!"

Peter stared at her. "What? You think I don't know that? You really want to lecture me about playing it safe?"

"You take risks willingly? So why the Hell can't I?"

"Because it isn't the same thing!"

"Oh, is this some kind of superhero superiority complex or something…"

"Lower your voice…"

"I will _not_..."

"Peter? MJ?"

Glaring at each other, Peter and MJ both pulled out radios. "I'm here, Victor," Peter answered back.

"What's up, Victor?" MJ called back over her own radio.

Scene Break 

Victor took a deep breath to calm his own fears, and then relayed the news. "Sarah's reached stage three."

The radio went silent for a moment. "That's a good sign, right?" MJ asked, trying to keep the conversation positive. "I mean, that means she lived through the first two stages, right?"

"She's been in it for three hours," Victor answered.

Another long, uncomfortable silence. "And…that's _not_ a good sign, right?" Peter responded.

"No, it's not." Victor once more felt his own memories of the horror of his own stage three experienceall-encompassing darkness, coldness, stillness, with no one or nothing familiar anywhere for what felt like forevertrying to overtake him, then calmed himself. "Don't lose Mitchell. We have to get him before he gets away."

"Don't worry, we found the cash, and the cops are on their way," Peter reported.

"Good. Keep me informed."

Scene Break 

Peter and MJ stared at each other as the radio went dead.

"I hope she's O.K.," MJ said finally.

"Me too." Peter answered. "Victor's right, you know. Stephen's in as much danger from this as she is."

"You think so? You really think his life is in danger while her brain's exploding?"

"Well maybe not his life, but everything else is on the line right now. Stephen was five when his parents died, because he accidentally slipped and let the bad guys know what was happening when his father pulled the disappearing act to fight off the people holding them hostage. They died, he survives. Not long after Stephen and I started working together, their mortal enemy stabbed Victor while Stephen was off working on another aspect of the mission. Victor nearly died, Stephen got away clean. Harry Vincent betrayed him for his family, literally making him relive certain aspects of his parents' slaughter, and in the whole mess Harry ended up getting exiled, Stephen blamed himself for failing to see the signs, and he survived. I got taken over by a bad guy, and the Tulku very nearly died as a result while he was forced to fight me. Goblin attacked the cab, and Stephen got put in a car wreck while Goblin flew away with you as his prisoner. Moe nearly dies and he gets up to keep fighting. Every day, Stephen wakes up convinced that someone he loves is going to die and that it'll be his fault. Why do you think he walks so fast?"

MJ didn't answer.

"Frankly, right now, his feelings for Sarah, whatever they are, are irrelevant. She's one of his agents, and she needs him. If she dies and he survives...it will ruin him." He turned and looked at MJ, square in the eye. "If anything happened to you, it would ruin me too."

MJ nodded, tears forming in her eyes. "I know."

Peter came over and gave her a hug as the sun rose higher.

Scene Break 

_Sarah wasn't aware of much of anything. She was so alone. For the first time in what felt like forever, she was completely alone. At one time, this might have frightened her. But after what she'd just been through, it was almost soothing. She just wanted it allthe sights, the noises, the scary memories, the horrible realizations, all of itto just go away._

**_"Sarah?" _**

_"Go away," she begged him. "Just go away. Take your tricks, take your lies, take your games and leave me alone."_

**_"Sarah, it is over. It's all over now."_**

_"Good. Can I sleep now?"_

**_"No. You have to wake up."_**

_"Don't want to."_

**_"Open your eyes now, or never again!"_**

_"Fine with me."_

**_"Not with me! We still need you! I still need you!"_**

_"Doesn't matter. You'll make do. You always have."_

**_"I could, but I don't want to. Open your eyes!"_**

_"I...I…"_

**_"Do it! NOW!"_**

Scene Break 

Sarah opened her eyes and coughed, then stared into Stephen's intensely dark gaze.

One Stephen realized she was awake, he collapsed backward in sheer relief. "Hi."

Sarah tried to answer him, but her vocal chords didn't seem to work.

"It's O.K.," Stephen whispered. "You'll be O.K."

Sarah spoke again, another scratchy sigh. "Quiet..."

"O.K." Stephen said, shutting up.

"No," she said, getting her breath back. "Not you...me. It was..."

"I know. It's O.K. It's over. You did it."

Sarah started to cry, exhausted and strung out in every way a human being could be. "Stephen..."

Stephen gripped her shaking hands tightly. "It's O.K. You're safe. You're not alone."

And that was when it all came rushing back to her. Everything she'd seen, and everything she hadn't wanted to see. She stared back at Stephen with cold eyes.

Stephen saw her focus shift, and drew back from her, sitting at the foot of the bed.

For a long empty moment, they just stared at each other.

She was strung out, emotional and angry.

He was exhausted, emotional, and more than a little scared of what she was going to say next.

Sarah opened her mouth to speak, then started coughing.

"I'll get you some water," he said as he started to get up, grateful for the moment of distraction.

She grabbed him jerkily with shaking hands. "Don't leave me alone!" she begged.

He put a hand over her clutching grip to dislodge it from his other hand. "Sarah, you need something to drink. You've been going through the wringer for almost two days, you haven't eaten, you need something…"

"No! Please...just...stay with me...please..."

Stephen came over and sat next to her. "O.K. I'm here."

Sarah fell against him and clutched his hands with a near death grip as she shook from the remaining terror.

For once, Stephen did not try to move away.

After a long ten minutes, her trembling slowed. Sarah tried to speak once more but once more was overcome with a coughing fit.

Stephen gently extracted himself from her grip and retreated to the kitchen to bring her a glass of water.

She reached out for it, but could not close her fingers around it.

He sat down across from her, then guided it to her lips and helped her take a sip.

After a couple of tentative sips, she finally seemed to be coming out of the shock and was able to hold the glass by herself.

Stephen let go of the glass and watched as she finished the liquid, then smiled gently as she put her head back against the headboard. "Can I sleep _now_?" she asked.

"Yes," he reassured, taking the empty glass from her.

Sarah closed her eyes and sank back down flat on the bed, letting the spinning in her head carry her to sleep.

Stephen drew the cloak and blanket around her tightly and picked up the radio. "Still there?" he asked the radio.

"Of course," Marpa Tulku's reassuring voice answered.

"It's over. She's fine."

"And you?"

Stephen sighed. "I think some things have got to change."

Scene Break 

A tired and strung out Peter and MJ came into Victor's study. "The cops picked up Mitchell ten minutes ago," Peter reported. "Grand Central was his last stop before heading for the airport, so he had most of the money with him."

"Good," Victor said. "The Tulku just called. Sarah's O.K. It's over."

Peter and MJ collapsed into the couch behind them with relief. "And Stephen?" Peter asked.

Victor looked smug. "I think he's had a learning experience of his own."

"That'll be the day," MJ wisecracked.

Victor smiled mysteriously. "Anything is possible…and nothing is impossible."

Scene Break 

Stephen woke up from a light doze with a start, once more alarmed that he'd fallen asleep at his post. He looked around…and saw Sarah's eyes staring back at him. "Welcome back," he whispered to her.

Her voice was thin and raspy still. "Did I go somewhere?"

"I'd say so."

She tried to clear her throat. "Thirsty."

Stephen fetched another glass of water.

She managed to sit herself upright, but was still shaky as she reached out for the glass. "Help…"

Stephen once more helped her sip until she steadied herself, then moved back and let her finish the water.

A long moment passed while each took stock of the other once more.

"You saw a lot," Sarah finally whispered.

"So did you," Stephen answered. "More than anyone ever has." Stephen looked away from her eyes. "Are you scared of me?"

"No."

"You should be. I'm scared of me."

Silence. Each went from looking at the other to looking away and back again.

Finally, she seemed to gather herself. "Don't you ever lie to me again," she rasped.

Stephen nodded without hesitation.

"Ever."

Stephen nodded again.

"Ev-er."

Stephen kept nodding. "I won't. That's a promise."

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Seeing things?" he guessed.

"I can't tell," she replied. "The room's getting all blurry. It almost looks like…" She struggled for the words.

"Like you're swinging on a swing as a kid, where the trees and the grass and the sky and the playground all blends into a blur?"

She gave a sarcastic chuckle. "That's a pretty good description. Did you read my mind or some crackpot psychic book?"

"Neither. I met a freshly awakened clairvoyant during my early training. That was how he described it to me. That's what I meant when I told you a while back that the fact that you didn't 'see visions' was a sign of an untrained mind. Clairvoyance literally means 'clear vision'you will, from now on, really _see_ things."

Sarah started breathing hard. "I can't go back to the way I was, can I?"

"No," Stephen said honestly. "But you get a lot in exchange."

Sarah nodded slowly. "I don't know how."

"No one does when they first awaken. That's why it's important to have a good teacher. And fortunately, I know the best. There's a place in the Catskills far away from everything and everyone. It's a Tibetan monastery, run by a monk whose sole mission in life is to train psychics to handle their gifts. He can teach you everythinghow to gain control over your mind, how to actually see things…and how _not_ to see things, which is just as important."

"How long?"

"A few weeks at least before you can go back to New York."

Sarah shook her head. "I'll lose my job."

"I can take care of that."

"I want to go home."

"Absolutely not. Trust me, you do _not_ want to be in Manhattan while you're recovering from this. It's too noisy. Too many minds, too much background..."

"More than now?" Sarah rubbed her temples. "I'm already about to go mad!"

"That's why you need to go there…so you can be ready to go home again."

"I don't want to go away again."

"This is a good place. I've been there."

She looked up at him. "You have?"

"It's where I awakened. It's a nice place. _Very_ quiet. The teacher's a little demanding, but when it's over, you _will_ know how to handle yourself."

Sarah blinked, focusing her thoughts. "You went there?"

"Yes."

"You know what they teach?"

"Yes."

"Then you can teach me."

Stephen blinked. "Now, wait a minute…I am a _lot_ of things, but a teacher is _not_ one of them…"

"I know you," Sarah interrupted. "I can feel you now. In here." She raised a shaking hand to her temple. "I...I can trust you now. I understand now."

Stephen stared at her. "Sarah...about the only thing I know about teaching a clairvoyant is that I can't do it."

"But you're here," Sarah was tapping her forehead again. "You were in there with me. You saw everything. I...I need you to help me."

"Sarah..."

"_Please_."

Stephen came over and sat against he headboard with her. "O.K."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I can feel you in my head." she whispered. "I never realized…"

"How loud I can be?"

"That's one word for it, yes."

Stephen nodded. "I'm here for as long as you need me. I'm not going anywhere."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Sarah closed her eyes again, and let it all drift away, sleeping again.

Stephen waited till she was asleep, then eased himself off the bed again and pulled out his cell phone.

Scene Break 

The phone in Victor's study rang. Victor gave a glance at the caller ID, then hurriedly picked it up. "Stephen?"

"Uncle," Stephen responded. "It's over. She's fine."

Victor nodded. "I heard. I also heard you did great."

Stephen gave the emptiest, most bitter chuckle Victor had ever heard. "I did not. Oh, Uncle...what am I? What am I any more?"

"You are you," Victor told him simply. "That is all you are, and all you've ever been. You can't be anything other than what you are."

"That is easily the worst justification for being a monster I have ever heard," Stephen said. "How did Granddaddy live with himself?"

"With a lot of help from the people that cared about him."

Stephen thought long and hard. "Then it's about time I started treating them like the friends I always say they are. Is MJ there?"

"Yes."

"Put her on the phone."

Victor held out the handset to MJ. "He wants to talk to you."

MJ looked confused and picked it up. "Stephen?"

"MJ, I want you to go to Sarah's house. You will find a set of keys in the top drawer of the filing cabinet of the Sanctum. Collect some things for Sarahclothing, toothbrush, whatever you think she'll needand send it here. Victor will give you the address."

"O.K."

"After that, destroy the keys."

"What?"

"Destroy the keys. I won't be needing them any more." Stephen took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, MJ."

Now she was really confused. "Sorry? For what?"

"It was my fault you lost that soap opera job all those years ago. I made sure you didn't get the part. You nailed the reading, but the casting director was an agent of mine, and I didn't want you to be famous in case Goblin was going to attack you again. My intentions were honorable, but it made you miserable. And for that, I'm sorry. And I hope you can someday forgive me."

MJ stared at nothing for a while. "O.K.," she said finally.

"Put Victor on."

MJ handed the phone back to Victor, and turned, walking out of the room. Confused and concerned, Peter followed her.

"Stephen?" Victor said.

"Victor, there is a retired surgeon named Daniel Morgan, used to work at St. Vincent's. I want him arrested at once for murder, for operating under the influence. You can get a witness if you grill his replacement for a while."

Victor pulled out a pen and wrote it down at once. "O.K. How do you want to organize transport to Slide Mountain?"

"Sarah will not be going to the temple."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I heard you, but I don't think you really mean that. It's a death sentence to bring a newly-awakened adept back to Manhattan…"

"We're not coming back to Manhattan. Not for a couple of weeks, at least."

"So…" Victor tried to process what Stephen was saying. "Is the Tulku coming there?"

"No. I'm going to be teaching her."

"_You _will. You?"

"Yes."

Victor wasn't sure about this. "Why?"

"Because she asked me to, and I have to help her. I owe it to her."

"You do."

"Yes."

Victor didn't understand, but didn't argue. "All right."

"Tell Peter that the city is his for the next week or two. When Sarah is ready, we'll come home."

"We'll be here."

Stephen hung up.

Victor sat back in his chair.

"What was that all about?" Peter finally asked.

"I think Stephen…has finally gone insane," Victor finally said.

Scene Break 

Stephen closed his cell phone, turned off the ringer, then looked back over at the bed.

Sarah was clutching at the empty side of the bed in her sleep and moving restlessly.

Stephen put the cell phone on the dresser, then lay down next to her.

She calmed down almost immediately.

He smiled slightly, then gave a bit of concentration to telekinetically flip off the lights.

Moments later, both had descended into the safety of restful sleep as the world went on around them.

**The End**


End file.
